


The Littlest Siren

by IgnorantArmies



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Captain America - All Media Types, Hawkeye (Comics), Iron Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Incredible Hulk - All Media Types
Genre: Babysitting, Fluff, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 10:19:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3064211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IgnorantArmies/pseuds/IgnorantArmies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Avengers discover that Bruce has a way with babies - even when half naked, covered in concrete dust and in the middle of a battleground.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Littlest Siren

There was a humming in his ears – an incessant buzz that morphed into white noise and then slid into an undulating wail that was too human to be a siren. Bruce shook the broken glass out of his hair and winced his eyes open to try to find the cause of the noise – and then smash the shit out of while he still had a little residual Hulk power.

Through blurry vision, he made out Clint, Natasha and Tony, all hunched over something in the road. Steve stood a little further away, speaking to a pair of paramedics. Thor circled overhead, flying a long slow perimeter punctuated by the occasional flash of lightning. Beyond them all was an enormous crater of destruction – not all wrought by green rage, Bruce hoped. He wracked his brain for the reason they were downtown and all suited up, but the wailing noise was not particularly conducive to clear thought. It sounded like a nose-diving plane. He glanced up into the sky just in case. 

That was it. Flying drone things with bombs on. SHIELD was tracking down the source somewhere in the Atlantic while the Avengers tried to minimise the damage on the city. It had been like swatting flies for the Hulk. The drones had made a similar high-pitched noise just before they struck, but the mission was over, wasn’t it? He did a quick check to make sure he was still wearing enough clothing to make him decent and clambered to his feet. 

“Ohmygodmakeitstop,” Clint moaned, fiddling with his hearing aids. 

“Romanov, surely you have a maternal alter-ego?” Tony said, then quickly cowered as Natasha shot him her sharpest glare.

“What the hell is that noise?” Bruce asked, stumbling forward a few steps and leaning on Clint’s shoulder to see what they were all looking at.

Ah.

A baby: red-faced, mouth wide, fists clenched. And screaming. It sat strapped in its stroller in the middle of the road, thoroughly unimpressed by the team of superheroes that surrounded it.

“Where are its parents?” Bruce asked.

Natasha nodded solemnly to an ambulance nearby. “They’ll be okay, I think. Cap managed to deflect most of the blast but they caught some shrapnel. At least this little guy is all right.”

Bruce looked from one teammate to another incredulously. “Is no one going to... I don't know, pick him up, maybe?”

The others looked sheepish. 

“I’m only good with ‘em when they can talk,” Clint explained.

“And I for one would rather hug a Chitauri,” Tony said.

Natasha just shrugged in a way that said: not-my-mission.

Bruce sighed and leaned down to unstrap the kid, sliding his dusty hands beneath its armpits and gently lifting it up to his chest. The baby must have been six months old or so, he thought, and the moment it felt contact it stopped its crying and gazed at his dirt-streaked face inquisitively.

“Hey,” he said quietly. “You scared, buddy?”

The baby sniffled and hiccupped as normal colour returned to his cheeks. Bruce wiped away the few remaining tears with his thumb.

“There you go… See? Only a robot man, a flashy god, a couple of deadly assassins and a giant green rage monster. Nothing to worry about.”

Clint poked his head over Bruce’s shoulder and grinned at the kid. “Hey little dude.” The baby stared at the archer’s face for a second – a broken nose, two black eyes, a bunch of gravel stuck in his cheek – and let out a high pitched cry. 

“Awww, baby, no.”

Bruce rolled his eyes and jiggled the kid on his shoulder, remarkably uninhibited about doing a little bouncing dance while half-naked in the middle of the city. For once he wasn’t worrying about the Hulk’s collateral damage, or the ache of transformation, or the return to reality. The baby gave another little snivel and let out a giggle. 

“This is so going on YouTube,” Tony said.

Natasha waved her fingers at the kid. “Hey little dude.”

The baby cooed. Clint frowned. “I literally just said that.”

“It’s all in the delivery,” Natasha smirked.

Steve jogged over and spot-checked the situation. “Hey, is he okay?” 

“I could do with a drink,” Clint grumbled.

“I meant the baby.”

“He is a baby,” Natasha said, with a sweet smile on her face, not taking her eyes off the kid, “A big dumb baby who like shooting arrows into people.”

Clint humphed and stomped off to retrieve his arrows from the rubble. 

The baby yawned and tried to twist off Bruce’s nose with an idle sort of curiosity. 

“They’re about to take his parents to the hospital,” Steve said, nodding over his shoulder at the ambulance. “You want to ride behind with the kid? He seems to like you.”

Bruce felt himself flush. “Uh, yeah, sure. If you think-“

Steve nodded firmly. “I think that would be best.”

“Well, okay then.”

Natasha and Tony exchanged grins that promised immense emotional torture in Bruce's future, but he didn’t care. He climbed carefully into the back of the waiting SHIELD car, cradling the baby to his chest, his eyes fixed on the child's. As the vehicle pulled away, the kid started chewing on its hand and nestled into the crook of Bruce's elbow before making the tiniest of sighs and slowly falling asleep. Bruce froze in place, barely breathing, watching the flicker of the child’s eyelashes and the gentle rise and fall of its belly. This was not the time to think about what might have been - about how he didn’t every time get what he wanted – instead, he let the warmth of the little body in his arms seep through into his heart and closed his eyes as the car silently drove on.


End file.
